The other day as I watered some seedlings, a female Anna’s Hummingbird flew in for a closer look, clearly watching the spray of water from the hose. When I redirected the water a little bit higher, she flew up and perched on a branch, and for the next several minutes she wriggled and ruffled her feathers in the soft shower of water. As she moved there were intermittent bursts of iridescent greens from her wings and head.
I love the fleeting flash of iridescence in bird feathers, stones, butterfly wings, cat and dog eyes and so many other places all around us. It is such a hard quality to reproduce in print, so I’m experimenting with a few techniques while knowing that a hummingbird feather will always be the most captivating of all.
In the meantime I played around with some watercolors of a hummingbird and Fuschia flowers growing on my front porch.
